Self help mac miller6/1/2023 ![]() On the other hand, it’s about giving in to your indulgences-“treating yourself” often used as a justification for shopping in excess, eating fast food, sleeping in, and skipping that tedious day in the office. On the one hand, it implies facemasks, green juices, yoga, and massages. But Miller’s untimely death just months after the album’s release might lend a somewhat different analysis. Upon release, the single was initially interpreted as a song about doing the necessary work to maintain and balance good mental health, as the title obviously suggests. The chilling “Self Care” music video from the same album sees Miller rapping from inside a coffin while lighting up a cigarette and carving “Memento Mori” into the wood. As listeners, we are led through the wispy grey clouds and shattered sunlight of Mac Miller’s mind assuring us of progress and healing-however slow-punctuated spritely by the hopeful notes, “they told me it only gets better.” ![]() ![]() and I was drownin’ but now I’m swimmin’ / through stressful waters to relief.” The lyrics, sung against a gentle, airy instrumental, evoke ennui and a languorous mental drift. ![]() “I just need a way out of my head / I’ll do anything for a way out of my head /. The opening song on that album, “ Come Back to Earth” sets the tone for the upcoming musing on life, death, pain, and redemption. In Swimming (2018), Miller’s final album before his passing, he gets gritty with his depictions of struggle and survival. The range of genres Mac Miller experimented with included jazz, rap, lo-fi beats, funk, and R&B- with music one could cry, make love, and dance to, it’s no wonder he remains so alive in our collective memories, even three years after his passing. So of course we all felt the heaviness of this loss. In a way, we could see parts of ourselves-the part that struggles, is insecure, but pines so hard for perfection-in him. His vulnerability and existential musings were relatable to so many millennials questioning their place in the world, facing a future in flux while reinventing themselves in an ever-shifting economy stacked against them.
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